I enjoy attending local events and meetups, and lately I’ve been going to more of them.  It’s a great place to meet people, learn new ideas and I just like an excuse to get out of the house from time to time.

When I run into others that are in my field, it’s typically a great thing.  The entire crowd at any given WordPress Meetup could be considered “competition” to one another (we’re all web developers trying to make a living), but it doesn’t feel that way at all.  We share knowledge and ideas, and help people solve their problems.  It’s wonderful.

I’ve found the same to be true of other meetings; when I meet fellow web developers we typically exchange info and keep up with each other.  Building that kind of community around your business can be very helpful and rewarding.

Yesterday was weird, though.  I went to the Marietta Business Association for the first time, as I’ve heard it’s a good group (and it is).  Before lunch I was hanging out talking to folks and was chatting with a guy that works for an I.T./web company.  As soon as he found out what I did, he said “Oh, that’s pretty much what we do too” and was clearly done.  In other words “I can’t sell you my stuff, so I’m wasting my time“.  It was quite surprising, and more than a little bit rude.  We swapped business cards and he took off.

After the meeting, I went home and emailed the folks that I met to say thanks for their time.  For example, one woman owns a catering company and will be providing lunch at the meeting next month, so I simply said that it was nice to meet her and I was looking forward to a great lunch next month.  Since I typically email everyone I get cards from, I emailed the I.T./web guy as well — something like “nice to meet you, if I have a client with IT needs I’ll certainly keep you in mind”.

I guess that was enough to jumpstart him, so he sent back a lengthy response telling me exactly what kind of client he’s looking for, all of the things they can do, how great they are, etc.  He’s clearly a sales guy, and maybe that kind of technique works, but seemed awfully pushy to me.  I much prefer working with folks, learning from them, and knowing what their strengths and weaknesses are.  In the case of this guy, all I know is that he’s a rude, pushy salesman that does I.T.  I won’t be sending anyone his direction.

On the other hand, here are some great people in the Atlanta area that I’ve met over the past few months that might be valuable to some of you:

• If you need basic WordPress training, Kathy Drewien is very knowledgeable and patient.
• If you need SEO or copywriting help, Jenny Munn can get it done.
• If you send out email newsletters, Patrick Carver has a sweet solution being developed.
• If you need web hosting, Carel Bekker’s company is top-notch and very affordable.
• If you need I.T. support, Derrick Eisenhardt is a great guy to use.

The list goes on and on.  While I’m sure it doesn’t work this way in every industry, I’ve found it invaluable to connect with these people and many others like them, and I’m looking forward to meeting plenty more in the near future.  If you’re in the Atlanta area and you’re into WordPress, come check out Kathy’s meetup, Marna’s meetup, or a new one that I’m starting in a few weeks.

If WordPress isn’t your thing (or you’re not in the area), look for a Meetup or other group near you and start connecting with like-minded folks today!

Your competition isn’t (necessarily) the enemy is a post from: MickMel

If you’re a huge brand, there are tools out there to help you measure the ROI of your social media efforts.  For smaller businesses, though, it can be much more difficult.  Perhaps it’s worth $700 per tweet, but it’s rarely that consistent.

More and more, the ROI of social media is simply that your business will continue to exist.  For example, if I asked you for the ROI on your business phone, your response would likely be “Who knows, but we obviously need to have a phone!”.  And you’re right!  The same goes for social tools; customers fully expect you to have a presence on social networks to help them find answers to their questions and hopefully to encourage them to come in for a visit.

Below are three example of businesses near me that have closed in the past year, and I feel that a lack of social media presence contributed to the demise of each of them.  A bad business will go under no matter how well they tweet, so perhaps these companies were doomed anyhow.  However, I think a bit of effort in the social world would have helped all three tremendously.

Bellacino’s

I loved Bellacino’s.  They featured “grinders” and pizza, and it was quite tasty.  They’d put coupons in some of those coupon packs that you get in the mail, but that was about as far as they went.  Their lack of social media simply meant that they were rarely in the front of our mind.  I had no real desire to “connect” with them necessarily, but if their coupons had been on Facebook I would have gladly hooked up with them on there.  If I had done so, perhaps they would have appeared in my feed from time and time and we probably would have gone in more often.

They went out of business around a year ago.

Stadium Bar & Grill

Stadium was simply made for social media, and they simply ignored it.  The restaurant did all kinds of fun activities, like trivia night and local music, but did a pitiful job of presenting it online.  For about 18 months their Facebook page had a total of one update that said something like “check back often for special events and coupons!”.  Great idea, but no execution.  They eventually started updating more often, but hadn’t built up a fan base of any kind and didn’t have enough time to build a presence.

I emailed a few of the owners to offer to help them out (for free, even), and never got a response.  They went out of business last month.

Rita’s Italian Ice

Rita’s was a place that served frozen ice, kind of like slushies.  It was really good!  Every day they’d have a different selection of flavors, which meant it was a perfect opportunity for social media.  Before I’d run out there to get treats for the family, my girls would always ask what flavors they had today.  Because of their lack of Facebook and Twitter updates, I’d have to call.  It was painful.  The poor girl answering the phone was typically trying to help a customer in the store at the time, while she’d be reading me a list of flavors that I’d be frantically writing down.  It was stupid.

With them, not only did I offer to help but I even took the time to set up a Twitter account for them, brand it, and show them how to use it.  Rather than updating daily with the flavors, they’d update it maybe once a month.  Useless.  I got tired of calling, so the only time we’d go is if the whole family was out together so that everyone could pick their own flavor.

They went out of business six months ago.

How do you do it right?

Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt

It’s not all bad news, though.  We have a local frozen yogurt shop called Menchie’s that is simply amazing on Facebook.  They’re just a little store in a strip mall and they have over 1200 fans on Facebook!  If you look at their page you’ll see why — tons of updates, coupons, interaction with every user, and just a great job of connecting with their customers.

It’s not rocket science; in fact, it’s quite simple.  The issue is that it takes time to do it right, and you need to commit to it.  I have no idea who runs the Menchie’s page (the owner, perhaps?), but they put the time into it to do it right.  As a result, they’re getting more customers through the door.

It’s no guarantee

I’m certainly not saying that this is a guarantee that your business will flourish.  Those other three stores still might have gone out of business, and Menchie’s might be gone in a year.  Ultimately, you still need to provide a great product at a great price and treat people right when they come in the door.

I can promise this, though: in all four cases above, social media was a distinct factor for bringing people into the business (or failing to), which is huge.

You’ll notice that all four examples are food related, and that was intentional — social media was seemingly made for restaurants, so if you’re still wondering if “that Twitter thing might catch on”, you need to get in gear now!  If you need help getting started, just get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to help.

The ROI of social media is survival is a post from: MickMel

Over the years I’ve posted quite a few video tutorials on here and on other sites.  The problem is that they were scattered all over — many on here, quite a few on Google Earth Blog, various ones on my Google+ account, etc.  Recently I set out to get all of those organized, and the result seems to be pretty good.

With the help of Ali Green, we’ve put together a new site called A Brighter Web.  On the site we have over 60 video tutorials on topics such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and WordPress.  We’re adding a few new videos every day, and we’ll be expanding our range of topics over time.

With that in mind, what would you like to see on a site like that?  More social platforms, like FourSquare and LinkedIn?  Or perhaps software tutorials, like Photoshop?  Leave a comment and let us know what you’d like to see, and we’ll certainly take your ideas into consideration moving foward.

Thanks!

Working toward A Brighter Web is a post from: MickMel

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a few groups of United Methodist Church leaders near Washington, DC to discuss how the church can best use their websites and social media tools to reach people more effectively.

My social media presentation was largely focused on the fact that Twitter and Facebook are no longer tools for churches to be “playing with”; they’ve become legitimate communication tools.  While most churches are doing fairly well with Facebook, Twitter remains a problem.  I’m hoping the tools I shared with them will help get things rolling.

Google+

Even though the sessions were only a week ago, my thoughts on Google+ have changed.  At the time, I said something like “You need to focus hard on Facebook and Twitter, and start playing with Google+ because you’ll need to be active there later this year“.  As it turns out, “later this year” is now.  The reason for the sudden shift is Google’s release of “Search, plus Your World”, which adds heavy Google+ integration into the search results.  Here’s a quick video showing how that works:

That alone should be enough to encourage you to get your organization on Google+.  But it goes further.  Try searching for “music” or “cars” and you’ll get a result similar to the shot below.  Notice the area that I outlined in red.

Notice that the red box is for Google+ profiles only; no Twitter or Facebook found there.  That is seen by some as anti-competitive, and perhaps it is, but that’s simply how it works right now.  Britney Spears trails a variety of artists on Twitter (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, etc), but none of them are on Google+ yet.  As a result, she’s suddenly getting a lot more free promotion when someone performs a search.

For now, that area doesn’t matter much for your business, but it will soon.  For local searches, Google will almost certainly start showing businesses in your area instead of just generic industry-related results.  If you wait until that happens before you join Google+, you’ll be way behind.  Suppose Katy Perry sees those results and joins Google+ to get back in the game.  While she may catch up to Spears eventually, she’s already behind by 1.3 million followers.  How far ahead do you want your competition to get before you join the game?

Faces in the main results

Not only is that side bar relevant, but the main search results (in both personal and non-personal mode) are already full of results from Google+.  In many cases, those results show the face of the author of the post even if the post was made on their own blog.  For example, the below search for “google earth imagery january” shows my face next to the second result, because it knows that I wrote that article and it connects to my Google+ profile; and this is the non-personal results!

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket

As much as I love Google+, I’m certainly not advising you to bail on Facebook or Twitter.  As I said at the beginning, those are legit communications platforms and your organization needs to be active on both of them.  For now, at least, all three are very important to your organization.

If you want to dabble in social media, there are places to do that.  Play with Pinterest (connect with me), play with Path, or play with any of the other new services popping up.  Pinterest may become more serious this year, but for now you can just poke the tires a bit.

I don’t have time

I hear it a lot — “not another service to keep up with!”, but it’s all about your mind set.  Instead of worrying about how you’ll have time for three separate services, just look at it from the positive side.  Now you have another way to connect with your customers, and this one will help you show up more frequently in the search results too.  It’s a win-win!

Once you get things set up, simply take 10-15 minutes/day to post your latest thoughts and respond to people that are talking to you.  It doesn’t have to be a huge deal.  If it takes longer than that to respond to everything coming your way, then your business is likely doing well and you can afford to spend more time working with those people (or hire someone to help you out).

Do you think any other services are worthy of the full attention of your business right now?  I can see LinkedIn being one for a few organizations, but that’s about it.  Agree?

It’s time to stop dabbling with social media is a post from: MickMel

A few days ago, I shared the story of a recent visit to Marlow’s Tavern.  In that post, I referenced a post from Scott Stratten where a simple apology from a hotel made a big difference in how he felt about things.  It reminded me of a recent stay I had in a hotel, and how a simple blame shift made the hotel look really bad.

On the way to Michigan for my grandmother’s funeral, we stopped at a Country Inn & Suites, where we’ve had enjoyable visits in the past. It was really just a minor issue at the hotel, too; the tub was full of water when we arrived, and apparently had been for days, because the shower floor was really slick when you stood up in it. We didn’t complain or anything, but I mentioned it in the email survey they sent a few days later.

Their response?

Wow!  It wasn’t a big issue before, but now they made me feel pretty stupid.  Did I imagine the problem?  I replied back that I was pleased to have received a response at all, but to belittle my issue was a pretty insensitive move.  If they had simply apologized for the issue I would have been good with it, but their questioning whether or not it was even a problem was pretty weak.

Applebee’s

It reminds me of a visit my wife and I made to Applebee’s years ago when we lived in Dothan, AL.  We tried to go there one night for dinner, but the place was full of smoke.  It was awful.  We emailed them to let them know about it.  A few days later, a manager called.  Which of the following did he say?

A – Sorry about that, one of our waitresses just had a baby and we all lit up cigars to celebrate.
B – Sorry about that, our ventilation system was having issues and the air in the smoking section wasn’t getting refreshed properly.
C – No it wasn’t.

It wasn’t a long phone call, but he insisted repeatedly that it wasn’t smoky in there.  Period.  Very odd.  Had he apologized and explained the situation, perhaps we would have tried going there again in the future.  With his actual response, we never went in the doors again.

You’re a human, and that’s ok

Your business is run by humans.  We know that.  When mistakes occur, which will certainly happen, how will you respond?  Will you respond like Chrylser did when a bad Tweet went out, and fire everyone in sight?  Or respond like the Red Cross did when a similar bad tweet went out, by apologizing and turning it into a win-win for everyone?

MythBusters

Another good example of a solid apology is with the MythBusters cannonball incident.  If you haven’t seen it yet, the MythBusters had a cannonball go way off course, through a neighborhood, through a house (!), across a six-lane road, and then end up inside of a minivan.  It was very fortunate that no one was hurt.

How did they respond to it?  The hosts of the show, Jamie and Adam, went to the neighborhood and held a brief press conference.  No lawyers making sure they said the “right thing”, just them giving a sincere statement.  Then they met the homeowners to see the damage, and will be paying to repair all of the damage (include hotel stays, if necessary).  In addition, they’ve vowed to investigate to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.  It’s exactly how they should handle it, but so many companies don’t.

When you’ve witnessed a company making a mistake, how did they handle it for you?

Your business isn’t perfect, but that’s ok is a post from: MickMel

Last week, I saw a speech that Gary Vaynerchuk gave to a bunch of RE/MAX realtors on the topic of social media engagement and it was quite awesome.  Here’s the video if you care to watch it:

Watching it inspired me to pick up Gary’s latest book, “The Thank You Economy“.  Awesome book, highly recommended. The folks at Marlow’s Tavern really need to read it.

As a general rule, we enjoy Marlow’s.  They have a few locations near us, good food, and solid service.  Tonight we took our babysitter out there for her birthday, but the evening had a few minor issues, and I think they could really benefit from having more of a “Thank You” approach to business.

No birthday desserts

We made sure to mention that today was our babysitter’s birthday, because we knew that Marlow’s did the little free cupcake dessert like most restaurants.  Nope, not anymore.  ”Some people lie about it being their birthday, so we can’t do that anymore.”  Uh-oh.  Really?  Did that surprise them?  Of course some people will lie about it — that’s why you give them a cheap cupcake and not a free steak. We had three adults and two kids, with a total bill of $78, and they’re concerned that they might give away a $3 dessert that isn’t legit?

While you certainly need to watch out for people taking advantage of you, this just seemed really shallow.  Companies that do customer service the right away (like Zappos) just focus on treating their customers like rock stars, and don’t worry so much about potentially giving up $3 every now and then.

My food was SLOW

It was remarkable.  The other four people in our party got their food fairly quickly, but I didn’t.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We’re guessing it was 10-12 minutes before my food arrived, which is crazy for a place like that, but things happen.  However, I still don’t know what happened.  I got a quick “sorry ’bout that” when they brought it, and that was it.  It was clear they didn’t care about the issue a single bit. A much better approach would have been like what Scott Stratten had happen at a hotel a few years ago; he had a very bad breakfast, but they apologized and explained the problem and he was much happier as a result.  Here’s his full write-up of that experience.

I decided not to press the the issue with them, just to see how they’d handle it.  Simply put, they didn’t.  No apology from anyone, no deduction on our bill.

(Speaking of the bill – $2.50 each for kid’s drinks?  Wow!)

Twitter

With those in mind, I did a little digging when I got home.  They’re pretty solid on Twitter (@MarlowsTavern), so I poked around for a while.  The content they push out is solid, but their conversation skills are weak.  They reply to some comments, but it appears to be at random.  Just in the past week:

• Jennifer asked whether a dish at Marlow’s was gluten free.  A few days later, she got a reply from them — yes!  Excellent.  So she replied back asking if they had a gluten free menu, or how they should request gluten free products.  Crickets…
• Robbie tweeted that he was taking his wife to Marlow’s for her birthday.  A quick “congrats” would have been nice, but they simply let it go without comment…
• Another user tweeted to rave about their Sunday buffet.  Again, no reply.

Seriously, businesses need to build true fans to be successful and here are people actively telling their world about your restaurant — and you ignore them?

Google Place Pages

How about their Google Place pages?  They have a handful of locations, so I just checked out a few of them.  I found these two gems rather quickly:

• “The salmon was tasty, but I won’t be returning“
• “Probably one of the worst meals I have ever had“

The response from Marlow’s, as expected, was silence.

Google+

Needless to say, they’re not on Google+ yet.  Not that I can really fault them for that (it’s new, smaller than Facebook/Twitter, etc), but people are already talking about them on there…

Website

Since they’ll probably be reading this, I’ll toss in a few suggested website tweaks as a bonus.  Their website is really pretty solid (many restaurants have dreadfully awful sites), but it could use some adjustments:

• On your front page, you have a link to your “to-go” menu.  Seems like people might often be in the car when they call for that.  And the menu is a PDF?
• In the footer, “copyright 2007″.
• Also in the footer is the “designed by” garbage.  Don’t leave that on there.
• Your canonicalization is a bit messed up.
• “Follow us on Facebook”.  Don’t you “follow” people on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  People get confused enough, so don’t switch them up for no good reason.  I’ve never liked the words “follow us” anyhow, because it implies that “you should follow us and we’ll send you a bunch of crap”.  I’m glad the Twitter widget (which you have on your site) says “Join the conversation” instead, as that sounds much better.
• Your Entertainment page encourages people to visit you on MySpace, which you haven’t updated in about two years.  Can’t blame you for the lack of updates, but you should probably remove that link.

It just takes time

Social media can be difficult for some businesses.  If you sell toilet plungers, it’ll take some work to come up with a creative campaign.  For restaurants, though, it’s dead simple.  Just put in the effort, connect with your patrons, and prove that you really care about them.  I should also mention that their Facebook pages (like this one) seem to be managed quite well, so they’re not totally ignoring everyone.

At the end of the day, these weren’t killer problems for Marlow’s.  We certainly think less of them, no doubt, but we’ll be back eventually — they’ll just be a little bit lower on the list.

Marlow’s Tavern, meet Gary Vaynerchuk is a post from: MickMel

Google has finally launched their business pages feature, and it’s open for everyone to sign up.  You can read more about it on the Google Blog, or watch the video below for a quick overview of how it works.

Business pages work very similarly to personal profiles, with a few notes:

• You cannot create an account for a business page; you create it via your personal profile (similar to Facebook).
• You can create multiple pages from a single profile.
• Each business page can only be managed by the profile that created it, so choose carefully the right person in your organization to create the page.  Support for multiple admins is “coming soon”.
• Pages cannot add users to a circle unless the user adds them first.  This is an awesome anti-spam move by Google.
• There aren’t any vanity URLs yet (like plus.google.com/pepsi), but those are presumably coming in the future.

Direct Connect

Tied to this release is a new feature called “Direct Connect”.  If you begin your Google search with a +, it’ll show brand pages that match the query in the auto-complete results, as shown here:

Over time, it’s possible that this could become a trendy thing to promote.  I can image someone like Pepsi having something like “Google +Pepsi” for more at the end of a TV ad.  If it does take off, it’ll be important to get your page listed there.  But how?

Badges

Today, Google released “badges” for business pages.  These allow you to add nifty widgets to your page, and people can add your brand to their circles directly from your website!  It’s pretty slick.

Even more important is the snippet of code that they have you put in the <head> section of your site.  This is there to prove that the page in question is really yours and will qualify you to show up as a Direct Connect option.  No word on how soon those will start appearing, but it’d be wise to get yours connected so you can show up in Direct Connect as soon as possible.  You can learn more about badges from this Google blog post.

Have you built a page yet?

Have you built a page for your company yet?  Leave a  link to it in the comments and show us your work!

Google+ Business Pages are now live; here’s how to get started is a post from: MickMel

I encourage many of my clients to use video to help show their customers what they have to offer.  Quick, simple videos can be quite helpful and aren’t very difficult to make.  Some examples:

• Car Dealer: Give me a two-minute tour of the latest greatest car on your lot.
• Realtor: Take me on a quick tour of the home and show me why I want to buy it.
• Photographer: Show me around your studio and explain why you chose the equipment you have.

Well-produced videos certainly have their place, but they tend to be slow and expensive to create.  With a Flip camera (or even a decent cell phone) you can grab a quick video and have it on YouTube in a matter of minutes.

What inspired me to write this post was a short video I saw today from Tim Terpening.  He works for Domain Homes in Tampa, FL, and there’s going to be an airshow in town this weekend.  As it happens, one of their neighborhoods is right next to MacDill Air Force Base and has a great view of the action, so they’re encouraging people to come hang out in their neighborhood by offering free parking and free food.  His video is a perfect example of what I’m talking about:

It’s under two minutes, he shows some of the planes doing some practice runs the day before, and then explains the deal they’re offering. Perfect.

If you want to build the killer well-produced video from time to time, go for it, but simply grabbing a camera and talking to your customers can be an amazing way to connect with them.

Simple video can be amazingly effective is a post from: MickMel

No matter what line of business you’re in, you can often get inspiration and ideas by checking out your competition.  You can see what kind of stuff they’re putting on their website, how they’re using social media, what new products they’re stocking, etc.  However, you ultimately need to trust yourself.  Here are a few examples.

Using music to set the tone

I was recently talking to a client about her site, and suggested we take the background music off.  After a brief discussion, she agreed.  When I asked why she put it up there in the first place, she said that a lot of her competition did that and she was trying to match them.  Being a brand-new business, emulating some of the established sites is certainly a great idea.  Now that she’s removed the music and they haven’t, she’s a step ahead!

Facebook “welcome tabs”

I have a lot of clients asking for “welcome tabs” on their Facebook Page.  While it’s certainly appropriate in a few situations, it seems that most people are doing it simply because everyone else is doing it, and no one is really thinking it through.  Most users come to your Facebook page for the content — information, specials, etc.  Why put an extra page in their way?

It feels a lot to me like the “splash pages” everyone had in the late 90′s — simply an unnecessary step between your user and the content they want.  We all eventually realized how stupid those were, so how are Facebook welcome tabs any different? (Honestly — leave a comment and convince me how they’re a good thing for everyone.  I’m certainly open to changing my mind if someone can supply a solid argument.)

Copying the church down the road

One church I worked at was obsessed with the other big church just down the road.  We’d often spend thousands of dollars copying activities that they did, even if we didn’t need them.  It was quite sad.  There were essentially two ways that our leadership viewed things:

• If they’re doing x, and we’re not, we need to start.
• If we’re doing x, and they’re not, we need to stop wasting time on it.

This was especially problematic during the rise of social media, because the “other church” was slow to adopt it.  Therefore, it was tough for us to convince our church leadership that it was worthwhile.  The “other church” is a wonderful place, but they have made some very poor technological choices over the past few years; very dumb things with their website, very little social media, etc.  Copying them in those areas would have been a foolish mistake.

Stylish restaurant websites

Have you ever tried to pull up a restaurant website on your phone?  It’s almost always brutal.  Slate recently had an article about this, and I agree completely.  Not only are they often unusable on a phone (especially an Apple device, with no hope of loading their cute Flash menus), but they’re equally frustrating from a normal browser.

My thought is that it’s the restaurant owners and their desire for a particular ambience that cause most of the issues.  While you certainly want the actual restaurant to have that feel, putting cheesy background music being a painfully “creative” navigation bar isn’t the way to do it on the website.

The University website

(via xkcd.  awesome site)

Part of this comes back to the problem of the University website.  Universities think that we want to read about the school’s philosophy and press releases, and that idea is validated by other universities posting the same junk on their home page.  This is very similar to churches that post a big link to their denomination’s website, rather than providing decent driving directions.

Check them out, but be smart

I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t see what your competition is doing.  As I said at the beginning, you can often get some good ideas from them.  Just be smart, and always view things through the eyes of your customers.  Ask yourself, “if I was a customer, why would I visit the site and what would I be looking for?”  If the answer is “cheesy music and a mission statement”, find someone to help you think through it a bit further.

Your competition isn’t always right is a post from: MickMel

We love our local YMCA.  Both of my girls play soccer there, we’ve done various swim lessons, and my wife and I work out there as often as we’re able.  Further, everyone we’ve met there has been very kind, knowledgeable and friendly.  However, someone up high on the Atlanta YMCA food chain made some poor decisions, because their (fairly new) website is shockingly bad.  Really bad.  Really, really bad.

So let’s say I need to find some information about my local Y.  I go to ymcaatlanta.org, choose “locations” and there it is — McCleskey-East Cobb Family YMCA.  So far, so good.  It’s a nice-looking site, but now things get bad.

The main tabs

There are four main tabs on the site:

• Photos: Ok, having photos is always a good thing.  Not sure I would have lead with that, but it’s acceptable.
• 360 Tour: The home page is not the place for that, but maybe it’s really cool.  I don’t know, because I couldn’t get it to work at all and I tried in two different browsers.
• Programs: Are you expecting a list of programs?  Me too.  Instead, it’s a YouTube video showing you how to use the search box at the top of the page.  really?
• Calendar: That wouldn’t be a bad thing to include, but it’s wildly incomplete.  Apparently, all they have on Monday is knitting.  Yikes!

Fortunately, the “programs” tab also opens up some links on the side.  I was on there recently looking for information on swim lessons for my daughter, and there is “Swim Lessons and More” in the sidebar.  Perfect!  Except I can’t click on it.  Why not?

Search

They seem to be aware that the search engine is the only way to go, so I dive in and search for “swim lessons”.  It comes back with a ton of results, and a note to “include branch name in search”.  That seems dumb.  Don’t they know I was on the McCleskey page when I searched?  Ok, so I search for “McCleskey swim lessons” and the results are a little better.

Results 1-3: PDFs
Result 4: Link back to the McCleskey home page
Result 5:  A link to some other “programs” page.  It says to “browse programs by branch”, so I choose McCleskey.  It just takes me back to the McCleskey home page again. Aargh!
Result 6: Search for a Class.  Ok, seems like my only choice.

Search For Classes

So I guess I’ll search for a swim class.  The problem now is too much info — they want to know which branch (again), class, month, age, days of the week, keyword and a class id.  Fortunately, most fields are optional.

While my daughter is now in Kindergarten, she still can’t swim very well.  So which class does she need?

• Preschool Advanced
• Preschool Advanced Beginner
• Preschool Advanced Intermediate
• Youth Beginner
• Youth Intermediate

It apparently doesn’t matter, because none of those return any results for a 5 year old, so I just choose “all classes” to see what comes up.  Now I get five results, but four are unavailable because they’re almost over and the other one is an “Adventure Guide”.  Not sure what that is, but it’s probably not what I’m after.  Does the YMCA really not have any swim classes for a five year old?  I sure doubt it, but that’s how it looks:

Soccer

Ok, let’s move on to soccer.  As I’ve mentioned, I’m coaching the soccer teams for both girls (“U6″ and “U10″).  I know that the U6 girls practice on field “B2″, so I need to figure out where that is.  I know that field 1 is in front of the Y and 2 & 3 are behind, but was hoping to find some kind of facility map on the site.  Nothing.

So, I went out to “Field 2″ on practice day and it turns out I was in the wrong place.  Back there was indeed field “2B”, but “B2″ is actually on “Field 1″.  I found out later that if it starts with a letter, there is a silent “1″ in front of it.  Wow!  A map of some kind certainly would have helped.  So “2B” is in the back, but “B2″ is actually “1B2″ and is in the front.  Got it?

Facility Map?

This is the strangest thing to me.  It seems that a big facility map would be awesome for a site like this and it wouldn’t be that hard to create.  Do something like the image below, but with each item clickable for details:

(no idea if those field numbers are accurate…)

When I click on “Fitness”, then show me photos of stationary bicycles and explain how great they are.  I could click on the pool and find info about open swim times, lessons, etc.  This isn’t rocket science.

Think about your audience

The bottom line is that you always need to remember who your audience is.  Similar to my “Don’t be like a University Website” post from last year, the people behind the new YMCA site got it all wrong.  They added things like 360 tours and photo galleries, when they should have been providing better program information and facility maps.

It’s not all bad, news — a lot of folks will visit the site looking for address, phone and hours of operation, which are thankfully right on the home page.  Now if they can get the rest of it fixed up, things will be all set!

Our YMCA has one of the worst good-looking sites ever made is a post from: MickMel